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An Unexpected Journey: A Newbie's Walk In Wet Shaving

Blade-meister said:
Yup, the more I do wet shaving the more I realize it's a journey of sorts. Like Frodo and Sam you set out believing your journey will look a certain way but when you reach the end you realize it looks nothing like you thought it would (and you might be missing a finger
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Just don't get to the end and realize that you could have avoided all that struggle if you would have just taken one of those big birds in the first place!
 
dangerousdon said:
Just don't get to the end and realize that you could have avoided all that struggle if you would have just taken one of those big birds in the first place!
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Haa!
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I say that every time my wife and I watch the LOTR trilogy. We watch the extended versions of The Hobbit and LOTR at least twice a year start to finish. Ever notice the orc that has the bushy soul patch? I think he's the only wet shaver in Mordor because he seems to care about grooming
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I looked back on messages between Shawn and I on the blacksmithing forum and found my first wet shave with a DE was on September 8th, 2018. Today's shave is #25, so it was a bit of a milestone of sorts. I didn't realize it was #25 until I looked back and counted starting with all the shaves I did before joining TSC. I excluded my dance with Lady Venus, that shave didn't count nor did I count any of the full cart shaves.

Today's Shave:

Razor: Gillette Super Speed (1956) DE
Blade: Gillette SB
Brush: Maggard Razors Synthetic
Soap: Razorock XXX
Bowl: Walmart Salsa Bowl (plastic)
Pre Shave: Shower / wash with soap

Post Shave: Cold water rinse, Witch Hazel (Walmart Brand), Cold rinse, Dry face, then immediately applied Nivea AS Balm to the face only, And of course "Mammoth Painting" to retain that wonderful XXX soap scent!

I kept everything the same today as it was yesterday. WTG felt great as did XTG and ATG. I really felt that two things have improved my shave this week:

  • My change in grip has taken any pressure I thou
    ght I wasn't applying and pretty much gotten rid of it. When I need more control I'm learning to just pinch grip the knurling harder which doesn't create downward pressure on the razor, but stabilizes the angle so that I can maintain it better. As a newbie, I think I tended to apply downward pressure to the face to keep control of my blade angle. This happens without knowing it. Pinching the handle harder has almost cured my pressure issues.
  • Not rinsing as much. I'm digging KJ's lack of rinsing technique. I feel the blade remains slicker then rinsing often. I'm rinsing maybe twice on a single pass verses the 8 times or more that I used to rinse.
I did some super light blade buffing along the jaw line and on the cheeks. The only cart clean-up I did was on the neck in spots, but today I quit trying for BBS on the neck and it helped a lot. I also did some clean-up stretching on the area of my neck that is below the jaw line. This technique worked well and I will continue to experiment with it in further shaves. Overall, I got a BBS on the face and DFS+ on the neck with hardly any irritation. My face actually felt great this morning and the WH felt great as well. Everything about shave #25 was enjoyable this morning. No shave by me would be complete without mammoth painting. The XXX is still smelling nice as I'm writing this post.

Looking back, it feels like I've been wet shaving longer than just 25 shaves! I think overall I'm too hard on myself and have been pushing myself too much. It's good to learn and apply things, but at only 25 shaves I think I'm not doing too horrible. My very first shave was in the shower and I wasn't even lathering up the MW Bay Rum in a separate bowl or even face lathering of any kind. I was just building it up on my beat-up Ever Ready Badger brush and applying a thin bubbly soap to begin shaving. I've come a long way from there but I can't take all the credit. Shawn and the rest of my TSC family has helped tremendously with advice, encouragement, and PIF boxes. The PIF boxes have been great little pick me up's and I can say is keep cleaning out your shaving dens I doubt I would have stuck with it had Shawn and others not fanned the flames to keep me going with those boxes of encouragement! So thank you to all.

For those wondering just how I chip flint, here's a rare picture of me in process

 
XXX is one of my absolute favorite Razorock scents. You sir are learning and progressing well at this hobby. Just wait soon you will be at the point you start calling it "MAN SPA" time.
 
The XXX has tallow in it, so it really is nice stuff. I like the scent too. Great stuff. Glad Shawn PIF'd me a sample.
 
Blade-meister said:
The XXX has tallow in it, so it really is nice stuff. I like the scent too. Great stuff. Glad Shawn PIF'd me a sample.
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With the exception of SV soaps all of the Tier 1 and elite soaps in my den are tallow bases. IMHO it does make for a much better soap than the glycerin bases. SV is an entirely different breed of contender.
 
Today's shave was interesting. It was my first dance with CBL!

Today's Shave: Shave #26

Razor: Gillette Super Speed (1956) DE
Blade: Gillette SB
Brush: Maggard Razors Synthetic
Soap: CBL The Shaving Cadre
Bowl: Walmart Salsa Bowl (plastic)
Pre Shave: Shower / wash with soap

Post Shave: Cold water rinse, Witch Hazel (Walmart Brand), Cold rinse, Dry face, then immediately applied Nivea AS Balm to the face only. 2 applications of Nivea was needed this morning.

Shawn PIF'd me the CBL so I could try some true Tier One soap. The lather built very easily, nice and thick and slick. The scent reminded me of what a gourmet lemon-lime soda would smell like if such a thing existed. I'm not a citrus fan to that extent but I noticed that there is a very pleasant scent that follows the citrus that I really like. CBL painted very well and I was set to enjoy this shave......until the burning started. I found out before my first pass that there is something in the citrus that doesn't agree with my skin sensitivity. No biggy, I powered through it
with a WTG, XTG, and ATG shave (face only with the ATG). I've not had a slicker soap and I couldn't be more pleased with the soap's performance. Clean-up seemed to last forever because this soap just did a super job of staying slick enough. I had to stop myself or I'd still be there chasing BBS
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Honestly, I think any other scent will work fine in CBL soaps so I can't wait to put an order in. Overall, good shave. BBS on the face DFS+ on the neck.

Post shave was rough. I had a lot of redness and my face felt like I had razor burn. A good careful cold rinsing a few times and 2 applications of Nivea / WH seemed to help and now my face looks fine and feels great. I did mammoth paint with the CBL because I wasn't sure if it would react with my chest area. Too bad, because the scent was awesome!

One factor that may have not helped my shave is that I was think the SB blade was on shave #4 forgetting that on Wednesday I used it for a WTG shave so I was on shave #5 which is one shave too many for me. I only typically get 3-4 shaves right now out of a DE blade.
 
Aw dang, sucks about the reaction! I hope you can find a scent that works better for you!
 
Sucks about the reaction to the soap CBL is really really good stuff. Good shave otherwise though and keep your eyes open next week for a brown truck. A Doc box is headed your way.
 
I don't fault the CBL, my face just didn't like something in that scent. I'm going to try the Cigar Shop Cowboy, Cigar Shop Indian, and Stout Oatmeal when I get a chance. I can't say enough about the performance and look forward to using some of the others. First time any beef that expensive has been that close to my mouth
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Yeah, I won't be able to use the TSC CBL soap. My face reacts badly to lime. So, I feel your pain.
 
Today I changed things up considerably. I took Saturday off and Sunday was a nice cart shave due to it being a busy day for us.

Today's Shave: Shave #27

Razor: Gillette Super Speed (1956) DE
Blade: Poly Silver
Brush: Maggard Razors Synthetic
Soap: Razorock XXX
Bowl: Walmart Salsa Bowl (plastic)
Pre Shave: Shower / wash with soap

Post Shave: Cold water rinse, Witch Hazel (Walmart Brand), Cold rinse, Dry face, then immediately applied Nivea AS Balm to the face only.

Sunday's shave felt so good it got me to thinking.......which can be dangerous. My thoughts were centered around why the cart shave in the shower felt so good, was BBS and irritation free. The answer..........I don't know, but lets try a full DE shave in the shower on Monday! So that's what I did.

One problem I had early on with DE shaving in the shower is the heat making my lather disappear. Part of that was due to poor lathering, but to take that variable out I lathered up my bowl before getting
in the shower and left the lather, bowl and brush outside the shower and on the floor where it was cooler. When it came time for the shave, the PS blade worked very comfortably and smooth. No break-in shave needed. A WTG pass was effortless. Now my WTG pass is north to south. When I cart shave I always follow the same WTG pass with a pass that goes south to north. I haven't done that outside the shower because it felt like it was against the grain. Weird enough, I decided to try this south to north pass as my 2nd pass. No problems at all with a hot face and in the shower. So I'm thinking this is probably a truer XTG pass. My 3rd pass was from ear to nose (right side) and nose to ear on left side. My 4th pass started on the left and went ear to nose, then nose to ear on the right side. Both 3rd and 4th passes included the neck with some bull frogging and face stretching. My face still felt great so I did some clean-up & blade buffing. I didn't go crazy with it because I really didn't want to start off the week with irritation or redness. What a great shave! BBS in almost every area with a few tiny places being DFS+. The noticeable thing was that after post shave my face didn't feel hot nor did my neck. They both felt cool and looked more like my cart shaves.

I've been cold shaving for most of my DE shaving time. It seemed to work better, but as I've honed my lathering skills, I think the warm shower shave is going to work better for me. I'll do it for this week and see how it goes. Today's shave is what I've been looking for. It's not the spa experience, but still very enjoyable.

A big thanks to KY Dave for PIF'ing me the the Poly Silver blades and Shawn for PIF'ing me a sample of the RR XXX!
 
So one question this brings up is prep for your DE shaves. You’re pretty much shaving while continuing to prep when you shave in the shower. How long after you get out of the shower do you shave with a DE? When I used a cart, if I didn’t shave immediately after getting out of the shower, I wouldn’t shave because it didn’t take but a minute for the whiskers to get tough again. When I started DE shaving, it was pointed out that all the preparation I do with lathering and all that causes that same delay after the whiskers being prepped. So now I create my lather and then shave to try to get to the shave ASAP after the shower.
 
I would start my shave right after the shower. As soon as I got out I'd do a cold water splash-down to make sure my face remained wet. You make a good point though. If you had to put a time limit in minutes for how long the golden time would be right after the shower, what would it be? (e.g. 5 minutes, 2 minutes?) My assumption always was that right after you dry off you start shaving.

I've got some PSO on the way so maybe applying that will help create the conditions I'm experiencing by shaving in the shower. Hmmmm.
 
I really don't know any more. With the carts, seriously if it wasn't within the first minute or so I would skip. For the first year of traditional shaving, the delay didn't even cross my mind and I'm sure I was at 5+ minutes to make the lather etc. Now, when I'm not making a video, it's probably down to a minute or two, but I don't notice as much of a difference. But I also do try to keep my face wet if I'm not going to get right to the shave.
 
It's probably somewhere in the vicinity of 5-10 minutes after stepping out of the shower before I begin shaving, especially if I'm making a video. A little less if I'm not (probably under 5). I don't notice any difference between the two scenarios.
 
The mystery remains! Glad you’ve seemed to have found a warm water solution though. Good stuff!
 
Half the time I shave after a shower and time does elapse before shaving and half the time I just go in and splash water on my face for about 15 seconds and start face lathering. I know prep would make things better but 'm lazy in the prep area. I'll need to give it more effort.
 
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